No Favorite Emerges in Race for Japanese Premier

Sunday

Aug 28, 2011 at 6:04 PM

The vote is Monday, but most of the candidates are relative unknowns and seem to be short on concrete ideas.

MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — In the brief race to choose Japan’s next prime minister, five candidates vied Sunday for support within the governing Democratic Party, but none of them appeared to have a decisive lead going into Monday’s vote.

The campaign began on Friday after Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced his resignation. It has so far failed to grip the nation, which has had five prime ministers since Junichiro Koizumi stepped down in September 2006. Most of the current candidates are relative unknowns and seem to be short on concrete ideas for directing this rudderless country.

The winner of the party vote will face a host of daunting tasks. Foremost among them: rebuilding the earthquake- and tsunami-devastated northeast, mitigating the damage caused by the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and finding ways to pay for those efforts while halting the rise of the yen, reining in the ballooning national debt and ending two decades of economic malaise.

It could also be the last chance for the Democrats, who ended a half-century of virtual one-party rule by the Liberal Democrats two years ago with promises to revitalize Japan, only to flounder under the indecisive leadership of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. His successor, Mr. Kan, was forced out over his perceived failure to lead an effective response to the triple disaster in March.

The policy debates ahead of the vote have focused on whether to eliminate nuclear power and how to finance a reconstruction that could cost a quarter of a trillion dollars. But the most divisive issue has been whether to rehabilitate the party’s fallen kingmaker, Ichiro Ozawa, who controls more than 100 lawmakers, the party’s largest faction.

Mr. Ozawa is a skilled political operator who could help the often hapless Democrats get things done, but whose style of backroom deal-making has made him intensely unpopular by the Japanese public. A political financing scandal forced the party to revoke Mr. Ozawa’s voting rights, and Mr. Kan for the most part excluded him and his faction from the government.

But that has not prevented Mr. Ozawa from playing a potentially decisive role in the current election. The candidate who appeared to have the race sewn up — Seiji Maehara, 49, a popular, hawkish former foreign minister who was close to Mr. Kan — lost momentum when Mr. Ozawa threw his support to someone else.

Mr. Maehara had reached out to Mr. Ozawa, who publically rejected the overture by ending their meeting after a mere 10 minutes. Mr. Ozawa then announced his support for the trade minister, Banri Kaieda, 62, instantly making him the closest thing to the front-runner.

The winner must win a simple majority from among the 398 lawmakers who will vote.

On Sunday, Mr. Maehara said he supported the party’s February suspension of Mr. Ozawa, while Mr. Kaieda countered that the Democrats needed “Mr. Ozawa’s strength to overcome the problems” facing Japan.

The split between Mr. Maehara and Mr. Kaieda raises the possibility that one of the other candidates will emerge as a compromise. The most likely to do so is Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, 54, a fiscal hawk who has called for tax increases to finance the post-tsunami reconstruction. The final two candidates are Sumio Mabuchi, 51, a former land minister and aide to Mr. Kan, and Michihiko Kano, 69, the agricultural minister.

Mr. Maehara and Mr. Kaieda agree on many policy issues, including gradually shutting all of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors and eliminating nuclear power, a position supported by many lawmakers and a large number of voters, according to recent polls. Mr. Noda has been the biggest supporter of nuclear power, stressing the need for a reliable source of electricity power to prevent further damage to Japan’s stricken economy.

In diplomacy, the candidates are unanimous in supporting the security alliance with the United States. Mr. Maehara supports a robust relationship and has called on Japan to join a trans-Pacific free trade agreement being championed by Washington. Mr. Kaieda is seen as favoring slightly more distance from Washington, calling for closer ties with China, a position also long favored by Mr. Ozawa.

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